New Zindra Blog Post

I am roadside on Yedboro (In The Adult Continent of Zindra). I see two roadside parcels have been awarded to folks but they haven't started building yet. The folks across the street from me have a venue built but have not had any events yet. The other corner sells a plethora of adult low-cost items and the other corner has a very nice corporate office building set up - but it is empty. I have scheduled activities all day Sundays so that is the only day I see any significant activity around here.

My ticket is still pending. Escalated, in the supervisor's que.

It will be very interesting to see what will happen the rest of this month, as the target date for enforcing ADULT content on ADULT land was to be 60 days after move tickets were accepted, making it near the end of August (per Maggie).

According to Jack at his office hour, the Zindra migration is nearly complete, for whatever that's worth. I shouldn't think he'd say that prematurely because Zindra has been a reason / excuse for lack of progress on any number of other Land Team initiatives, so unless there's yet another diversion, progress will be expected on those other topics now.

As to activity level, I'm not sure what to make of the activity that I do see. I ended up with parcels on three Zindra sims (traded for the one big one I got in the swap), and I flit among them regularly, working on different projects. There are some clubs with some inhabitants, but the times I've actually gone in, they all seemed to be trafficbots at one, and at the other a kind of desperate assembly of employees with no apparent customers. (I got a lot of attention at that latter one; all I wanted was to warn the owner that her darling copybot protector was spamming far and wide.)

I can't say that I'm doing much to increase activity. Somehow I keep finding other urgent matters that detract from actually doing anything to generate business.

I have been by quite a few while exploring around... I really can't believe people still use these and have them set to shout and go off every couple seconds! hate those darn things instant TP for me

I have been slowly re building doing a 100% re make fun! have noticed a few more new neighbors slowly coming in and starting to build as well Haven't met anyone yet Hoping to meet at least the closest and see what type of build they are doing, so maybe we can keep the over all look close... activity seems about the same as I see all over the grid .. it looks somewhat down to me (fewer green dots) but then again the grid is very big.

Prok blogged about Blondin meeting with select private estate barons that are planning zoning in Zindra. This will definitely be a hot topic today at the Zindra land owner meeting (since none of the actual Zindra tier payers were asked to participate in Zoming their own properties). Here is a taste of what was discovered:

The good thing about Prok is he hates everyone equally and with uncalled for invective. Sadly from that irrelevant paragraph hurling poison at his fellow and potential inmates on zindra is proof of that.

I can see why they chose to consult the large land managers. If you think about it, LL has a large estate that it has never bothered to do anything with. It has no experience in land management at a community level.

The people in that group actually do. Through trial and error they know what works and is desirable and what doesn't and isn't, so picking their brains is a sensible idea. Problem is that LL will only take some of those ideas, not understand the underlying reasons why things are done and how they interconnect and of course will cock it up. Then of course they'll blame us as we asked for for better management of the land by LL.

Whilst I think there is reason to consider that eventually Zindra may be spun off as a separate entity (grid or private estate) I don't think that's on the cards in the near future. The classification of Zindra as an estate atm is more likely the way they get around it not automatically hitting us for tier.

I'd stand down the mob and put the pitchforks away for the moment but keep them handy. The estate managers can only lose if the mainland is made more attractive so it's not in their best interests to give LL useful information. Something that I bet LL has never considered.

Lias, thanks for pointing us to those blog posts by Prok. Very interesting indeed.

In light of what I'm reading there, I think we should demand that all of Mosh transit hub and the sim across the river from Mosh be given to Zindra Alliance, tier-free in perpetuity. God only knows what nonsense they have planned for that "Reserved for Future Development" sim, but I sure as hell don't want it planned by a bunch of Estate owners with no skin in the game of Zindra (nor by LDPW for that matter, judging by their sad performance everywhere else on Zindra)--certainly not without input from the Zindra community. And we see how effective that "input" has been so far.

I think we as a group need complete control over these central areas to prevent yet more damage to the continent.

http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2009/08/lindens-secretly-planning-zoning-with-big-sl-land-barons.html

http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2009/08/mainland-is-a-special-part-of-second-life.html


The links as well for those that want to go and have a read

Well we would have to check with the self-appointed chair people of the Zindra 'Alliance' about that. I suggested weeks ago we donate tier to the ZA and preserve some of our abandoned mainland parcels. Then we could finance buying up some Zindra land to preserve as a community site. They said no to that idea. But maybe you can talk them into it.

I am not sure that is the way to go, but rather give the community the ability to govern municipal land like you would in the physical world.

Bay City is an example of what has gone wrong here; despite Linden Lab's willingness to work with the Bay City Alliance group, I think we can say that community development in Bay City by and large has been a failure.

There are many reasons for this, but i believe one of the primary reasons are lack of democratic process. Those who scream loudest at OH meetings seems to get their way despite it having negative effect on the community in general. Placement of Infohubs is one such example. It is also very slow and (in the long run) non-productive for a community to have to channel every request through a Linden representative, however helpful they might be. In fact it is stifling.

On the basis of this I made a proposal to Linden Lab at the beginning of this year how to organize Bay City, and I will repeat the proposal here as it might be a starting point for discussing how a community in Zindra can be organized:


1. A group called “Bay City” is created by Linden Lab where Linden Lab representatives retain the Owner roles in the group.

2. Ownership of all municipal land in the Bay City sims are transferred to this group.

3. All landowners in the Bay City sims are invited to the group in the “Resident” role which has only basic group privileges.

4. A “City Official” role is established for the group with privileges to add and remove members.

5. Partners of landowners, and other SecondLife avatars with permanent residency in Bay City, can be added to the Bay City group with resident status by registering in “City Hall” by one of the City Officials.

6. A City Council is elected (on a 6 month basis) by the residents registered in the Bay City group.

7. The City Council appoints members of group-privileged roles for land security (Police Department) and land management (City Engineer).

8. The Police Department role will be able to deploy City-wide griefer protection and add avatars to the blacklist. Private landowners in the City retain full rights to secure their own land – the Bay City Police cannot put anyone on the ban-list of a private held parcel out over the City-wide ban-list.

9. The City Engineer role has the privilege to manage municipal land in terms of temporary use for events etc. The role has also the privilege to be able to return unwanted objects from municipal land. Private landowners retain the full rights to manage their own parcels.

10. The City engineer can be engaged by the City Council, under approval by Linden, to undertake construction work on municipal land and structures.


The proposal is structured such that:

* There is no need to grant estate privileges to manage the municipal land
* Linden retains full ownership of the group and thereby also group objects and land.
* The privileged roles are appointed by an elected council ensuring some democratic control
* Private parcel owners retain full rights to their parcels
* It gives both landowners and other residents a sense of community
* It provides basic City-wide griefer protection
* It is reasonably easy and fast to implement.
* It removes dependency on Linden resources for basic land management, thereby putting less strain on Linden support and LDPW resources.

NOTE: The police role was formulated this way because all Bay City sims are double primmed and therefore half of the land in the 21 sims is Linden land. This land is impossible to protect as it is without g-team intervention which is slow and spotty. The results has at times been significant griefer activity out of Linden land, particularly in the sims around the Infohubs Hau Koda and Moose Beach. This might be less of a problem in Zindra both because there is less municipal land and because access to the continent requires some form of account verification, weeding out most (spontaneous) griefers.

EDIT: This was by no means torpedoed by Linden Lab, but rather by some city residents who saw their power-by-bitching position removed.

So would that mean that all the Linden owned land would be controlled by the residents of Zindra...to keep the griefers and spammers out? Maybe due to the size and reason for Zindra (Bay City is an optional place, you live there if you want. Zindra, however, was a forced move. It was move or close), actually letting the residents have more control would be a good option, although i for one, and i know a LOT that agree, would say the first clean up in Zindra needs to be the horrid Linden owned mole made sculpty penis-looking trees.

The issue here though seriously would be.. getting everyone to agree on what should be allowed and what shouldn't. If they simply would turn auto-return on the Linden water and Linden owned water sims, if your in a boat/on a jet ski/ect, your fine, but if you crash on a sim crossing ect, your vehicle would auto-return to you. That would cut down on accidental litter, and also, when the asshats drop the replicating/particle spitting screaming prims, they would mass return with out having to wait on the Gteam. This also means that you could rezz your boat, submarine, whatever, and as long as you were in it before the 5 minute return time, you would be sailing free.

Its getting the Lindens to agree that's the issue. What.. make everyone's life easier? Better? Give the residents a little control to show them how its done? Heh. We can always dream though

~Brie

Not the roads along the sim borders?

No, not to keep the grifers and spammers out. That is less of a concern in Zindra.

"The horrid Linden owned xxx" would be taken care of by points #

9. The City Engineer role has the privilege to manage municipal land in terms of temporary use for events etc. The role has also the privilege to be able to return unwanted objects from municipal land. Private landowners retain the full rights to manage their own parcels.

10. The City engineer can be engaged by the City Council, under approval by Linden, to undertake construction work on municipal land and structures.

But the primary point is to give some democratic control over how communities, including the land they reside on, are governed, and NOT having to channel every piddly little thing through Linden Lab; which only serves to stifle the communities.

Estates thrive because they are to a very large extent able to shape their destiny themselves. Mainland - not sure where it is heading.

There is one additional point; the more self governed the communities in SL gets, the less likely are they to be subject to external regulations by say politicians. With no internal democratic governance processes, the politicians just will regard SecondLife as "something" run by a private company. But with strong communities their view will most likely change to one of voters the don't want to mess with.

A 20 sim estate linked to mainland, promoted on the blog, tier free for a month whilst it all gets built with the aid of the Lindens, there are at least 2000 dollars worth of reasons why they'll be happy to co-operate.

The pitchforks are most certainly primed for the next great "This isn't favouritism" blog post.

Linden Lab have in mainland a 5,000 sim estate, that has high occupancy. How many large estates have tier paying tenants near the mark Linden Lab do on mainland? Warts and all, mainland works.

Oh, well I certainly have seen no mention of that offer to them anywhere and I am going to live to regret this by stepping away from the mob and asking just where you saw this and how it fits in with them asking about how to do more effective hands on management of the mainland.

As an aside to your comment, perhaps you haven't seen the post from Desmond (I can't remember where I saw it unfortunately) where he talked about his residents reaction to the thought of being hooked to the mainland and it wasn't positive.

In then end if they chose to support and give incentives to those who pay upwards of 75,000 USD **per month** to them in fees, do you blame them? They're a business not a charity and if their business plan is to support the big guys and not foster the smaller businesses then we just have to live with it. As we have done before and will do so again.

https://www.xstreetsl.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=viewtopic&t=124886&start=15

http://secondthoughts.typepad.com/second_thoughts/2009/08/the-archipelago-of-egos-30-days-free-tier.html



Yes I've seen Desmond's post, Desmond has an awesome community setup that very few come close to matching, which is why his residents are in no rush for a link up I guess.



There are ways and means of giving perks without undermining others. USD$75,000 a month is an impressive amount but far more tier is paid for by those who don't pay such large sums, the combined tier fees from smaller business owners outweighs that of the large land barons vastly, so Linden Lab should really tread carefully when treading on toes.

Some sort of tier break could be done, you own 250 sims, you get free tier on two sims, that wouldn't give them any sort of huge comeptitive advantage but it would save them over seven grand a year which they'd probably invest back into SL. At the same time the smaller businesses would probably be encouraged to try and keep growing, rather than being discouraged from doing so by LL's blatant favouritism.

A good point- the roads and the gerbil-cage builds are my least favorite parts of zindra- except maybe for the tiny amount of terraforming allowance on the sandbar "island"- Honestly, are LL *allergic* to interesting geography? You'd think that the moles would have a bit more creativity than to use a simple "Tropical coral atoll" as their template for *every* island. The world has things like volcanos, chalk cliffs, canyons, mountain lakes, waterfalls, and all kinds of stuff other stuff. Enough with the sand and palm trees already!

Sorry- just getting frustrated trying to come up with ways to turn a sand dune into a vampire habitat. Sigh... We *used* to live in a volcano, you know...

^V^

Tonight's Zindra meeting 10th August is on the wiki

http://www.slapt.me/wiki/index.php/Zindra_Alliance_-_Blondin_Linden_Meeting_Transcript:_10-08-2009

Isn't that just *special*?

Oh, and it slipped out later in the meeting that "mid-september" is also the date now in play for requiring Estate sims to tag as Adult.

So, basically, Mainland Zindra businesses are left to twist in the wind while their Estate counterparts can hawk Adult content from Mature sims for another month or so.

At which point all Adult content silently disappears from anybody running a pre-1.23 viewer, with no mandatory upgrade required.

LL could hardly have devised a worse blow to Zindra businesses. But the week is yet young.

In all fairness, all Zindra regions should be flagged Mature only to be turned adult at the same cut-over date as the private estates.

Has any one sold their original main land, land after transferring? I keep getting an offer but I thought I was supposed to keep it and let LL take it back? as I was not keeping it.
any info on this anywhere I looked around but have no clue what to search for?

since they are not making the 1.23 mandatory (I swear they said it would be late august no?) I think I may as well try and recoup some $L from a sale if its permitted.

I was wondering when this shoe would drop. At most U.S. technology-based companies, scheduling anything for late August is like scheduling it for the week between Christmas and New Years. Nearly every employee who has kids is on vacation; even your more experienced singles will also be out, because being the only person holding down the fort sucks so badly.

There could be other reasons as well, but IF vacation is the only reason why there's been a delay and it will impact Zindra businesses, simple pressure might work to get the date moved up again. Things slip this time of year sometimes just for convenience' sake, and if LL can be convinced they'll have more of a support issue if they put something off than if they do it now, they'll do it now.
.

Be glad they didn't use that hideous blue and orange coral from the Northern continent for the land texture.

If you have had an offer then sell it as its OK to do so

Well I hope that they do something soon and ensure private estates have to flag asap to level the playing field for everyone